Pages

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The Twilight Zone

Submitted for your approval. After cruising the Caribbean during the New Year’s Holiday, a family of four spends the night together in a single hotel room in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Though they share a common room, each family member experiences a completely different reality as they retire for the evening and enter their own personal corner of . . . The Twilight Zone.

Jordin, twenty-two, daughter, student and habitual traffic offender, shares a queen-sized bed with her sister. Able to hear her parents whispering her name while taking a shower behind two closed doors, she’s deaf to police sirens and the guttural death rattle of her stepfather’s ghastly snoring. She quickly falls asleep, sparing her from the nightmares awaiting her family.

Kellie, forty-nine, wife, mother and vacation junkie, immune to her husband’s nightly snorting but not to her own menopause, wakes up after hot flash number four and rises to use the bathroom. Stumbling in the dark, she collides with an open closet door that she swore was shut. Upon setting foot in the bathroom she freezes; something is amiss. The shower curtain, fully drawn, completely obscures the tub. She creeps toward the toilet keeping one eye on the curtain, certain that the veil is hiding a flesh-eating zombie. Driven by an overheated and overloaded bladder, she takes a seat on the toilet, turning sideways to avoid looking directly at the tub. She bears down, grunting, forcing herself to pee as fast as humanly possible. Barely finishing, she races back to bed and draws the covers over her head.

Joe, fifty-three, husband, father and chronic sufferer of nocturnal gastric distress, abruptly awakens in the middle of the night. Compelled by a souring burrito that has overstayed its welcome in his digestive system, he makes an urgent sprint for the bathroom, smashing his face into an open closet door, cursing his family for not keeping it shut. Sweating profusely, he strips naked and collapses onto the toilet seat. Still cursing, moaning in pain, he unleashes a horrific torrent of sound, matter and odor that would empty a restroom on the Jersey Turnpike. Possessed by his own internal demons, he is oblivious to the drawn shower curtain that sent his wife scurrying away in fear.

Kyra, fifteen, the youngest child and unfortunate heir to her father’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies, sleeps fitfully, unable to block out her father’s snoring. She grabs her pillow and blanket and attempts to sleep in the closet. It’s too small, so she moves to the only other spot where she can escape the din. Her slumber is not peaceful. She cowers behind the bathtub shower curtain, pillow clenched tightly across her face, desperately trying to block the punishment meted out by her parents. She makes no sound; she simply endures. Sunrise comes, but it’s too late, the damage is done. A young girl’s delicate psyche is marred for life after spending an evening with her parents in . . . The Twilight Zone.------------------------------------------------------------Hanging out again with fine folks at Yeah Write.